This invention relates to wireless communication and, more particularly, to wireless communication in an environment where transmission channel characteristics change relatively rapidly.
The explosive growth of wireless communications is creating a demand for high-speed, reliable, and spectrally efficient communications. There are several challenges to overcome in attempting to satisfy this growing demand, and one of them relates to the time variations in the transmission of multicarrier-modulated signals.
Multicarrier transmission for wireless channels has been well studied. The main advantage of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission stems from the fact that the Fourier basis forms an eigenbasis for time-invariant channels. This simplifies the receiver, which leads to an inexpensive hardware implementations, since the equalizer is just a single-tap filter in the frequency domain—as long as the channel is time invariant within a transmission block. Combined with multiple antennas, OFDM arrangements are attractive for high data rate wireless communication, as shown, for example, in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/213,585, filed 17 Dec. 1998.
Time invariability within a transmission block cannot be guaranteed at all times, for example, with the receiving unit moves at a high speed, and that leads to impairments because the Fourier basis at such times no longer forms the eigenbasis, and the loss of orthogonality at the receiver results in inter-carrier interference (ICI). Depending on the Doppler spread in the channel, and the block length, ICI can potentially cause severe deterioration of quality of service